It is desirable in natural and processed foods and beverages and pharmaceutical compositions containing flavoring agents and/or sweetening agents, or both, to both enhance the sweetness or flavoring taste and also to extend the sweetness of flavoring taste when such compositions are consumed in the oral cavity. Enhancement of flavors or sweeteners and also extension of the flavor or sweetness taste in chewing gum compositions and foods are particularly difficult but desirable, since the generally soluble flavoring and sweetening agents are masticated out of the insoluble gum base and swallowed quickly in use.
There are a number of techniques for enhancing flavor and sweetness and extending the flavor and sweetness, such as by the controlled release of the flavoring agents and sweetening agents or through processing steps or by other techniques (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,634,593, issued Jan. 6, 1987 hereby incorporated by reference which discloses a composition and method of providing the controlled release of sweeteners in a chewing gum composition). In particular, it would be desirable to provide for a simple sweetness and flavor extending additive to be coated on or incorporated into edible compositions to increase the intensity and duration of the sweet taste and flavor of foods, beverages and chewing gum compositions.
It is known that artichoke extracts have been reported to make water taste sweet, and the active factors in the artichoke extracts have been reported to be salts of chlorogenic acid and cynarin (see Bartoshuk, Lee and Scarpellino, Science 178: 988-990, 1972). Flavonoid compounds have been disclosed as possible preventative agents for dental caries (see Rosen et al, 1984).